The Pendulum Swings
by KissTheBoy7
Summary: AU in which HIV is curable - but only if it's passed on to another person. Mark, naturally self-sacrificing and self-loathing. Roger, increasingly suspicious. Mark/Roger, mostly unrequited. In progress.
1. Chapter 1

All it takes is a pinprick.

Mark swallows, his hand hovering over his sleeping roommate's arm, dangled so temptingly over the side of his mattress. There have been so many nights like this – nights spent jabbing himself with sewing needles in preparation, until his hands didn't shake anymore, until the adrenaline stopped making him dizzy. He has to do it, he has to do it _soon _before Roger does something stupid and gets himself sick.

Time is of the essence and Mark can stop it, if he could just work up the nerve.

He takes a deep breath and his head spins – so much for preparation, so much for planning, what's rational about this anyways? His wrist is stinging, littered with tiny needle-marks like the ones at the crook of Roger's elbow that nobody talks about.

He's already halfway there! Why can't he just-

Roger snores and he jumps so badly he knocks the alarm clock off of the bedside table, sucking in with a choked off curse as he fumbles to catch it before it can crack on the floor. He's not even sure why Roger has an alarm clock, because he works the night shift and besides, he can't be assed to get up more than twenty minutes before _that _half of the time but the moment is ruined. Mark's heart is pounding too hard now, his fingers trembling – it's not going to happen tonight.

But it will. It will soon.

Holding his breath, the filmmaker slides back around Roger's mattress and tiptoes across the living area until he can collapse behind his own partition, shaking and curling around himself. The needle clutched in his hand jabs his palm; a thin stream of blood snakes its way down his wrist.

What kind of hero is he? Can't even save his own best friend. He's not cut out for sneaking around like this.

Tomorrow night for sure, he tells himself miserably, and pulls a threadbare blanket over his head.


	2. Chapter 2

They're eating Chinese out of the same carton.

"Mark." Roger stops abruptly, chopsticks hovering midair, and Mark wrinkles his nose at their proximity to his face. He pushes his glasses up the bridge and snaps his own, glancing up at him- and he freezes.

Roger stares down at his arm like he's seen April's ghost, and in some ways he has.

"Roger, it's not- what you think." He manages not to stammer but the damage has obviously been done. Something in his roommate's face shuts down and he turns away, throwing the chopsticks onto the table, stalking back to his room.

They'd been making so much progress. He'd almost agreed to go out for a walk just this morning.

Mark slumps his shoulders and stares into the carton at the cheap brown noodles as if expecting them to have the answers. They stare soddenly back at him, smelling of dirty socks. Roger's dirty socks.

He really needs to take a trip to the Laundromat soon…

But no- no, he should explain himself first. He can't just let him think… think _that. _It wouldn't be right, giving Roger another reason to sulk. Another excuse not to leave the house, not to shower, not to date the pretty Latina downstairs who gave him a scented candle once when he bumped into her with an armful of them in the stairwell.

No. Roger doesn't need that. Mark is a better friend than that.

Now to think of a convincing lie.

_"Where are we going? I don't want to-"_

_"Just for a walk. You know. Getting out of the house."_

He inhales deeply and exhales slowly – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… And so on until he can open his eyes and see nothing across the table from him, not April, dead in the bathtub, and not Roger, shuddering with his eyes glazed and his arms wrapped around himself as they escorted him to the rehab clinic five blocks away, Collins on one side and Mark on the other, squeezing his shrunken biceps the whole way - nothing but air and an abandoned pair of chopsticks.

_Deep breaths, Cohen. This isn't rehab._

It's far more serious than rehab. It's a cure. It's not foolproof, but Mark's willing to take what he can get.

_Deep breaths._

He pushes the chair back from the table with a metallic scrape and stands up, staring at the partition across the room.

_3\. 2. 1-_

_Action._

"Roger," and he's there in a few short strides, and Roger doesn't even turn to look at him, hunched like a disgruntled cat in the far corner of his bed with his face to the wall. Fuck. "Roger, come on. You would know. If I was doing something that stupid."

"I know track marks when I see them," comes the muttered response. Bleak. Like the only thing in the world he thought he could count on had betrayed him, finally, like he always knew it would.

Sometimes Mark scares himself with how easily he can fall into Roger's head.

"They're not track marks."

"Then what the fuck are they?" He turns, eyes narrowed and perhaps a bit watery, and Mark goes weak in the knees because _this was not what was supposed to happen, _Roger wasn't supposed to cry, Roger wasn't supposed to talk in that dangerous I'm-gonna-yell voice of his, Roger was supposed to get _better-_

"They're-" He starts, cheeks flooding with color as he scrambles for a suitable response. He can't tear his eyes from Roger's. _Please understand. _"They're not track marks. I just nicked myself…" _Please don't hate me._ "I wasn't being careful." _It was for you. It's always for you._

Mark is certain he'd do anything for Roger. Even trade his life away.

Roger is up and stalking towards him before he knows what to do, where to go, grabbing him by the wrist and twisting to peer down at the dots scattered miscellaneously up and down his wrist.

It doesn't look good.

"Rog- I swear to God, I swear, I haven't been – I w_ouldn't, _you know I-"

He meets Mark's eyes for a good, long moment – Mark's fragile nerves threaten to snap under the pressure, the air strung with live wires, afraid to breathe – and then breaks away, shoving him so that he stumbles out into the living area.

"Get _out."_ Something crashes to the floor, the echoes grating endlessly, a tuneless twang. It sounds like the guitar.

Mark gets _out_.

If the guitar was first, the next thing Roger threw would probably have been him.


End file.
